The world's premier rent-a-cop business runs the security show in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US-Mexico border. They also run the coca
crop-dusting business in Colombia, and occasional sex trafficking
sorties in Bosnia. But what can you expect from a bunch of mercenaries?

The U.S. State Department awarded DynCorp a multimillion-dollar
contract to advise the Iraqi government on setting up effective law
enforcement, judicial and correctional agencies. DynCorp will arrange
for up to 1,000 U.S. civilian law enforcement experts to travel to Iraq
to help locals "assess threats to public order" and mentor personnel at
the municipal, provincial and national levels. The company will also
provide any logistical or technical support necessary for this
peacekeeping project. DynCorp estimates it could recoup up to $50
million for the first year of the contract.

Already armed DynCorp employees make up the core of the police force in
Bosnia. DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai, while
DynCorp planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions over the coca
crops in Colombia. Back home in the United States Dyncorp is in charge
of the border posts between the US and Mexico, many of the Pentagon's
weapons-testing ranges and the entire Air Force One fleet of
presidential planes and helicopters. The company also reviews security
clearance applications of military and civilian personnel for the Navy.

DynCorp began in 1946 as a project of a small group of returning World
War II pilots seeking to use their military contacts to make a living
in the air cargo business. Named California Eastern Airways the
original company was soon airlifting supplies to Asia used in the
Korean War. By 2002 Dyncorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, was the
nation's 13th largest military contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue
until it merged with Computer Sciences Corporation, an El Segundo,
California-based technology services company, in an acquisition worth
nearly $1 billion.

The company is not short on controversy. Under the Plan Colombia
contract, the company has 88 aircraft and 307 employees - 139 of them
American - flying missions to eradicate coca fields in Colombia.
Soldier of Fortune magazine once ran a cover story on DynCorp,
proclaiming it "Colombia's Coke-Bustin' Broncos."

US Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Wired magazine
that hiring a private company to fly what amounts to combat missions is
asking for trouble. DynCorp's employees have a history of behaving like
cowboys," Schakowsky noted. "Is the US military privatizing its
missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment - to
hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public
opinion?" she asked.

Indeed a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the
company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by
DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering
legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several
cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers
intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed
"a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives."

What's more, Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force
monitor filed a lawsuit in Britain in 2001 against DynCorp for firing
her after she reported that Dyncorp police trainers in Bosnia were
paying for prostitutes and participating in sex trafficking. Many of
the Dyncorp employees were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal
activity. But none were prosecuted, since they enjoy immunity from
prosecution in Bosnia.

Earlier that year Ben Johnston, a DynCorp aircraft mechanic for Apache
and Blackhawk helicopters in Kosovo, filed a lawsuit against his
employer. The suit alleged that that in the latter part of 1999 Johnson
"learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in
perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal
weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral
acts."

The suit charges that "Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors
literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment,
and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the
individual slaves they had purchased." "DynCorp is just as immoral and
elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do," Johnston told
Insight magazine. He charged that the company also billed the Army for
unnecessary repairs and padded the payroll. "What they say in Bosnia is
that DynCorp just needs a warm body -- that's the DynCorp slogan. Even
if you don't do an eight-hour day, they'll sign you in for it because
that's how they bill the government.

AFGHANISTAN: Policing Afghanistan: How Afghan Police Training Became a Train Wreckby Pratap Chatterjee, Tom DispatchMarch 21st, 2010The Pentagon faces a tough choice: Should it award a billion-dollar contract for training the Afghan National Police to Xe (formerly Blackwater), a company made infamous when its employees killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007, or to DynCorp, a company made infamous in Bosnia in 1999 when some of its employees were caught trafficking young girls for sex?

US: DynCorp Fires Executive Counselby August Cole, Wall Street JournalNovember 28th, 2009DynCorp International Inc. said it has terminated one of its top lawyers, a move that comes on the heels of the government contractor's disclosure that some of its subcontractors may have broken U.S. law in trying to speed up getting licenses and visas overseas.

US: DynCorp Billed U.S. $50 Million Beyond Costs in Defense Contractby V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post August 12th, 2009A Defense Department auditor, appearing before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, testified Tuesday that DynCorp International billed the government $50 million more than the amount specified in a contract to provide dining facilities and living quarters for military personnel in Kuwait.

Policing Afghanistan: Obama's New Strategyby Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch March 23rd, 2009A new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan will be unveiled by President Barack Obama this week. It plans to ramp up the training of the Afghan army and police at a cost of some $2 billion a year. Private contractor DynCorp is already lining up to bid for some of the lucrative contracts. This article provides an overview of key reports assessing the training of the Afghan police, and DynCorp's role, to date.

IRAQ: Controversial Contractor’s Iraq Work Is Split Up
by JAMES RISEN, The New York TimesMay 24th, 2008For the first time since the war began, the largest single Pentagon contract in Iraq is being divided among three companies, ending the monopoly held by KBR, the Houston-based corporation that has been accused of wasteful spending and mismanagement and of exploiting its political ties to Vice President Dick Cheney.

IRAQ: A Private Realm Of Intelligence-Gathering; Firm Extends U.S. Government's Reachby Steve Fainaru and Alec Klein, Washington Post Foreign ServiceJuly 1st, 2007On the first floor of a tan building inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the full scope of Iraq's daily carnage is condensed into a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation. The intelligence was compiled not by the U.S. military, but by a British security firm, Aegis Defence Services Ltd. The Reconstruction Operations Center is the most visible example of how intelligence collection is now among the responsibilities handled by a network of private security companies that work in the shadows of the U.S. military.

AFGHANISTAN: The Reach of War; U.S. Report Finds Dismal Training of Afghan Policeby James Glantz and David Rohde; Carlotta Gall, The New York TimesDecember 4th, 2006
Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.

IRAQ: How Iraq Police Reform Became Casualty of War
by Michael Moss, with David Rohde and Kirk Semple, The New York TimesMay 22nd, 2006So was much of the rest of Iraq. An initial effort by American civilians to rebuild the police, slow to get started and undermanned, had become overwhelmed by corruption, political vengeance and lawlessness unleashed by the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

IRAQ: Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Policeby Michael Moss and David Rohde, The New York Times CompanyMay 21st, 2006Field training of the Iraqi police, the most critical element of the effort, was left to DynCorp International, a company based in Irving, Tex., that received $750 million in contracts. The advisers, many of them retired officers from small towns, said they arrived in Iraq and quickly found themselves caught between poorly staffed American government agencies, company officials focused on the bottom line and thousands of Iraqi officers clamoring for help.

US: Tender Mercenaries: DynCorp and Meby Jeremy Scahill, Common DreamsNovember 1st, 2005 In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, journalist Jeremy Scahill investigated the role of private security companies like Blackwater USA, infamous for their work in Iraq, that deployed on the streets of New Orleans. His reports were broadcast on the national radio and TV show Democracy Now! and on hundreds of sites across the internet. In response to Scahill's recent cover story in The Nation magazine "Blackwater Down," the President and CEO of DynCorp, one of the largest private security companies in the world, wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation. Dyncorp CEO Stephen J. Cannon's letter is reprinted below, followed by Scahill's response.

IRAQ: Contractor Charged in Baghdad Badge Scamby Jerry Markon and Josh White, The Washington PostSeptember 21st, 2005A military contractor returning from Iraq was charged yesterday with distributing identity badges that control access to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone to people not allowed to receive them, including an Iraqi woman he was dating.

Dyncorp Rent-a-Cops May Head to Post-Saddam Iraqby Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatchApril 9th, 2003A major military contractor - already underfire for alleged human rights violations and fraud - may get a multi-million dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq.

ECUADOR: Farmers Fight DynCorp's Chemwar on the Amazonby Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, CounterpunchFebruary 27th, 2002The International Labor Rights Fund has filed suit in US federal court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians charging DynCorp with torture, infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of Ecuador and Colombia.

DynCorp-State Department ContractCorpWatchMay 23rd, 2001Corpwatch has acquired a copy of a $600 million dollar contract between DynCorp and the U.S. State Department. The company carries crop fumigation and eradication against coca farmers in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In Colombia it is also involved in drug interdiction, transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue missions, medical evacuation and aircraft maintenance, among other operations.

DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug Warby Jeremy Bigwood, Special to CorpWatchMay 23rd, 2001A U.S.-made Huey II military helicopter manned by foreigners wearing U.S. Army fatigues crash lands after being pockmarked by sustained guerrilla fire from the jungle below. Its crew members, one of them wounded, are surrounded by enemy guerrillas. Another three helicopters, this time carrying American crews, cut through the hot muggy sky.